What Should You Read Next? Here Are the Best Reviewed Books of the Week

Featuring Isabel Waidner, Danielle Allen, Amitav Ghosh, and More

Isabel Waidner’s As If, Danielle Allen’s Radical Duke, and Amitav Ghosh’s Ghost-Eye all feature among the best reviewed books of the week.

Brought to you by Book Marks, Lit Hub’s home for book reviews.

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Fiction

1. As If by Isabel Waidner
(FSG)

4 Rave • 4 Positive

“Grief is the engine of this surreal caper … The novel’s alternating narrators keep things moving briskly, the limited perspective of one chapter delivering the comic payoff of the next … Amid the dizzying back-and-forth, Waidner conceals a subtle exploration of midlife crisis.”

–Dustin Illingworth (The New York Times Book Review)

2. Ghost-Eye by Amitav Ghosh
(Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

1 Rave • 4 Positive • 2 Mixed

“Entrancingly mystical … With swathes of history and science, humor under pressure, mysterious forces, and stunning revelations, Ghosh’s provocative tale cues us to the wonders of the planet and spurs us to protest the mad greed and malfeasance fueling the climate crisis.”

–Donna Seaman (Booklist)

3. Good Company by Kate Christensen
(Harper)

2 Rave • 1 Positive • 1 Mixed

“In probing misogyny’s legacy and the uneasy intimacies among women, Christensen delivers a bracing meditation on trust, aging, and the wreckage violent men leave in their wake.”

–Alicia Rogers (Library Journal)

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Nonfiction

1. Radical Duke: How One Aristocrat-And the American Revolution-Transformed Britain by Danielle Allen
(Liveright)

3 Rave • 2 Positive

“Her meticulous and stylish study has the potential to significantly rewrite the history of the American Revolution’s intellectual origins … The book’s specific claims may be debated, but few can dispute its broader achievement. It speaks to the central paradox of our national origins: A revolution that repudiated allegiance to the British Constitution was nevertheless vitally inspired by that very constitutional inheritance.”

–Jeffrey Collins (The Wall Street Journal)

2. Trash!: A Garbageman’s Story by Simon Paré-Poupart
(Melville House)

4 Rave

“Despite its political thrust, the writing is suffused with literary oomph and good humor … I zoomed through Trash! in a couple of hours. Paré-Poupart does that magical thing that great memoir writers always do: he offers you a keyhole through which to peer into an unfamiliar world. My only complaint? I wish he had written more.”

–Ceci Browning (The Times)

3. Monster of a Land: On the Road in Search of Modern America by Lauren Hough
(Pantheon)

2 Rave • 2 Positive

“She writes beautifully of loss: loss of friends, family, neighborliness, mutual understanding, and meaning in a world ripped apart by endless consumption, digital dependency, and greed. She writes about home and belonging, and her passages on dogs are heartbreakingly tender. Fans of her first book of essays will be thrilled as Hough once again proves her unique ability to see connections among seemingly disparate people and situations.”

–Lisa Gieskes (Library Journal)